Downtown Houston has been lucky to profit from a metamorphosis over the past couple of many years. Stunning inexperienced areas, luxurious high-rises and motels, eating places, and up to date arts and leisure services are dwelling to spectacular artwork installations, farmers markets, main nationwide and worldwide skilled sporting occasions, and all the things in between. On the flip aspect of this, Houston’s central enterprise district has seen a steep decline in business occupancy, struggling to bounce again to pre-Covid ranges.
Houston is just not alone in experiencing this example. Nationwide, business vacancies have gotten more and more noteworthy because the gulf between residential rental charges and stagnant wages widens. Low-income earners, of us making between $20,000 and $30,000 yearly (sometimes minimal wage workers, college students and seniors residing on Social Safety), have been becoming a member of the ranks of the unhoused at an alarming charge as a result of shortage of inexpensive housing. Armchair economists and the like have been arguing for years that cities ought to repurpose these untapped sources into a chance to create dignified inexpensive housing that might preserve these in danger off the streets and near public transit choices.
Pew Charitable Belief, together with worldwide architectural agency Gensler, just lately launched their findings from a examine on the topic — with Houston being one among two markets studied. The “Versatile Co-Dwelling Housing Feasibility Research” discovered that changing Houston’s empty workplace buildings to communities of micro-apartments is, properly, possible!
“Within the present local weather of excessive building prices, rates of interest, constructing bills, and rising rents, this venture appears to be like on the standard office-to-residential conversion another way by leveraging the prevailing constructing infrastructure to cut back prices on a per unit foundation,” Brooks Howell, principal architect at Gensler, tells CultureMap. “The result’s a brand new housing typology, a co-living idea, that may present inexpensive housing to the massive and rising variety of decrease earnings single-person households in an city context.”
The numbers
HUD reported that in 2024 homelessness was at an all-time excessive of 770,000 individuals, up a staggering 18 p.c from the prior 12 months. Houston is on the low finish of the nationwide common, with a reported 3,270 homeless individuals (4/10,000 Houstonians). CoStar knowledge reveals that Houston’s central enterprise district incorporates 88 workplace buildings of over 50,000 sq. ft, 19 of which present reported emptiness charges of over 30 p.c. As of November 2024, the median lease in Houston for an condo was $1,297. The proposed rental charge for a furnished micro-apartment in a transformed workplace constructing in downtown Houston is $700 — all inclusive, with zero move-in prices, for the reason that items are totally furnished.
“The U.S. has a housing scarcity of 4-7 million houses, which has pushed rents to an all-time excessive and made it onerous to save lots of to purchase a house,” Alex Horowitz, a venture director for Pew Charitable Belief and a co-author of the examine, provides. “Houston has one of many highest workplace emptiness charges within the U.S., however workplace layouts typically do not work properly for condo conversions and carry excessive prices. This examine finds that changing places of work to dorm-style housing is cost-effective and might allow low rents — about $700 per thirty days to dwell downtown. That would make an actual distinction for individuals fighting excessive housing prices whereas revitalizing downtown.”
Co-living defined
Co-living is hardly a brand new idea. “Single room occupancy” dwellings, or SROs, have been extraordinarily widespread up till about 1950. It’s value noting that through the peak of its recognition, homelessness was uncommon. The co-living mannequin permits for a personal furnished house, whereas loos, kitchens, and laundry are shared services — very similar to a university dormitory. With 40 p.c of renters being single occupants, this mannequin promotes socialization and group, one thing that has been trending downward for the reason that pandemic.
Wesley LaBlanc, principal analytics director for Gensler Chicago, provides that this elevated dorm scenario is a “Leaping off level for quite a lot of fashions,” noting that there are six variations from the one within the examine. LeBlanc encourages individuals to “Suppose past the standard. An entire world of housing options come out of this.”
Particular person rooms share facilities akin to bigger residing rooms, loos, and kitchens.Courtesy of Gensler
What to anticipate in a typical transformed constructing
The Pew/Gensler report proposes a prototypical constructing customary of 24 flooring, 19 of that are residential, with 60 micro-apartments per flooring, or 1,140 residential items per constructing. Every flooring will supply six shared kitchen areas, 5 bigger shared residing areas, two smaller shared residing areas tucked into inside hallways, two central bathe areas with 5 non-public bathe rooms every — 2 bathe rooms will embrace bogs and sinks, plus two further bathroom rooms with 4 bogs and two sinks. The entire involves 10 showers, 12 bogs, and 14 sinks per flooring. Two laundry rooms, every with three washers and dryers are additionally obtainable per flooring.
The excessive price of changing workplace buildings into fully-plumbed, particular person studio flats may be price prohibitive, main a realistic Howell to ask: “What if we didn’t demo all the things?” The utilization of present centralized plumbing on every flooring saves a median of 25-35 p.c in building prices that might come up from operating new plumbing to every unit.
The bottom flooring would encompass a essential foyer, administration workplace, and 10,000 sq. ft of retail house. Flooring two by way of flooring are reserved for parking, whereas the fifth flooring would supply 10,000 sq. ft of Class B workplace house in addition to facilities just like the gymnasium.
Whereas subsidies shall be required for the conversion, the identical won’t be true as soon as the event is out of the development section. The co-living mannequin is projected to price round one-third of the price of changing an workplace constructing to particular person studio flats or establishing new inexpensive housing.
An illustration of what a bed room would appear like.Courtesy of Gensler
Micro-apartments particulars
Every particular person unit is designed to be 151 sq. ft, roughly the dimensions of a modest resort room. Furnishings embrace one extra-long twin mattress (bedding included), a desk, chair, nightstand, standard-depth half-sized fridge, storage shelf, and cupboard. Items can have solid-core picket doorways and acceptable sound insulation — all for a tidy $700 per thirty days.
Pricing has been a key think about figuring out this configuration for inexpensive, city housing. “Decreasing the price of housing to manageable ranges permits residents to spend extra on the opposite monetary wants of their lives, which has broad implications for high quality of life and properly being,” LeBlanc explains.
